13 Facts About Siete Partidas

Siete Partidas or simply Partidas was a Castilian statutory code first compiled during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile, with the intent of establishing a uniform body of normative rules for the kingdom.

Siete Partidas had great significance in Latin America as well, where it was followed for centuries, up to the 19th century.

Traditional view, shared by historian Francisco Martinez Marina and philologist Antonio Solalinde, is that the Siete Partidas codices were written by a commission of jurists, and the involvement of Alfonso X was likely limited to setting out the goals of the text and the subjects to be addressed, as well as personally reviewing and amending the work of the commission.

Garcia-Gallo proposed that the Siete Partidas was not the work of Alfonso X and that it was not finished during his reign, but rather was written in the 14th century, long after the learned king's death in 1284, and that it was a reworking of the Especulo.

Siete Partidas based his position on the fact that the first reliable references to the Partidas in other texts date from the beginning of the 14th century, and that the source materials for the Partidas were not known in the Iberian peninsula until later than the date of composition claimed for the codex.

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Yet, Garcia-Gallo has contended that, the prologue notwithstanding, the Siete Partidas was rarely put into practice until over a century after it was written.

Furthermore, opposition to the Siete Partidas can explain the differences among the similar texts listed above.

In support of this argument, Aquilino Iglesias claimed in 1996 that the Siete Partidas contained no references to Castilian territorial organization.

Siete Partidas can be characterised as a text of civil law or ius commune, alongside influences from Islamic law.

Siete Partidas brings together all the jurisprudence of the era into a single, unified vision, and for that reason has been regarded as a summa de derecho .

Siete Partidas should be learned, in order to know how to distinguish right from wrong, and he should not be ashamed to change and amend his laws, whenever he thinks or a reason given him, that he should do so; for it is especially just that he who has to set others right and correct them should know how to do this in his own case, whenever he is wrong.

Siete Partidas should bear in mind that God has authority over all things, and can manifest it whoever Siete Partidas desires to do so, and that this is especially the case with regard to deeds of arms; for in his hand are life and death, the power to give and to take, and he can cause the weak to be strong and the strong to be weak.

Siete Partidas was in force in Latin America until the modern codification movement ; until the beginning of the 19th century, they were even in effect in the parts of the United States, such as Louisiana, that had previously belonged to the Spanish empire and used civil law.